March 17, 2017

Art Date with Jean

I had a wonderful opportunity this week to work with two of my former students that wanted mentoring on their Art Quilting Journey.

They arrived bright and early on Monday morning and we spent the day exploring color in a variety of ways and working on color mock up’s to see how different fabrics played together. Our key work was “variety” and we tried to keep that in the forefront in our discussions.

They brought finished work and work in progress that they wanted to critique’ in a learning environment to spark their composition skills.

On day two I surprised them with a field trip to Bend to A6 for a lecture from Dawn Boone on Composition. The whole discussion played right into our discussion the previous day. We visited a gallery and looked at art with new eyes and came away with ideas and inspiration. Art Dates are a wonderful way to jumpstart the creative juices and help you to see principles and elements of design in a whole new way.

On the final day we reviewed what we had been doing for the past two days and I brought some work in progress in for them to critique’ so practice their skills. You can see in the “Fireweed” quilt how magenta placed a very important role in moving the eye around the piece.

It was a very interactive experience and they were such eager and open students that a lot was accomplished. They will check in with me from time to time and we will get together again in May.